The Medicare CW Is All Wrong: We Ought To Lower The Eligibility Age

The American health insurance system is outrageously expensive and inefficient.
It's a natural monopoly that we're pretending should operate like a
market. The result is the sad, bloated wasteful mess we have today. If you haven't
already read Stephen Brill's magnum opus in TIME, you really should.

Here he is on This Week discussing healthcare finance with free-market
worshipper Steve Ratner and bumbling ideologue George Will:

Well, if you put Medicare in the context of the larger health care
system, and this is something that everybody at this table is going to
think that I should go to a mental hospital when I get finished saying
this, the government and all of us would actually save money if you
lowered -- I said lowered the age for Medicare. If the Medicare age
were 60 instead of 65, the economy and the taxpayers would actually
save money.

The best policy would be a pure single payer system. But lowering the
eligibility age would be a start.

Why do conservative ideologues and their DLC-type enablers want to
waste healthcare money? They're not interested in efficiency or
costs, they're interested in enriching their cronies and keeping taxes
low on rich people.